Jusepe de Ribera

Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) was a Spanish painter and printmaker, noted for his baroque dramatic realism and his depictions of religious and mythological subjects. He was born in Spain but spent most of his life in Italy. Little is known of his life in Spain, though he is said by the painter and biographer Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco to have received his first training there under Francisco Ribalta (1565 –1628). It is not known when he went to Italy, but there is evidence that as a young man he worked in Parma and Rome. In 1616 he married in Naples, then under Spanish rule, where he remained the rest of his life. In 1626 he signed as a member of the Roman Academy of St. Luke and in 1631 as a knight of the Papal Order of Christ, although he always retained his Spanish identity.